This is a blog for Texas State students taking FCS 4347 (Family Policy) to be able to post their weekly reading assignment (3 newspaper articles about issues or policies that effect individuals and families) and to write their reactions, opinions and implications of the articles.

Friday, September 13, 2013

Texas textbook reviewers challenge evolution, climate change

1. http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/answer-sheet/wp/2013/09/11/texas-textbook-reviewers-challenge-evolution-climate-change/2. Education3. State Level4. A potential
policy that is being considered to help a problem/issue that
individuals/families face5. The Texas Freedom Network's evaluation of the textbooks in question will influence textbook ratings (hindering sales and availability of said textbooks) and the Texas Board of Education's decision to accept or reject usage of the textbooks in Texas school districts. The Texas Board of Education's decision whether or not to use text books based on their inclusion of evolutionary theory and global climate change theories will set precedence over the degree to which it is acceptable for Christianity and/or political agenda to permeate the classroom.6. On a constitutional level, teaching Christian ideals (or any religious ideals) in public schools is a violation of church and state. Beyond that, I feel that faith has no place in a scientific text or classroom - science is an analysis of observable, measurable phenomena, and because faith is unobservable and immeasurable, it is irrelevant to science. Creationism, whether there is evidence for it or not, is not a scientific theory - scientific theories are built on data which has been analyzed and observed over centuries. The inclusion of a faith based belief into a textbook is not only erroneous but damaging. Evolutionary theory is the basis of modern biology, and to discard it is to discard all the science that has been built upon it. Furthermore, to present one religion's creationist story in a textbook is simply ignoring the myriad creationist stories tied to other faiths, none of which contain less/more validity than Christian creationism. In regards to the TFN's qualms with the inclusion of global climate change rhetoric, there could be no logical reason for that other than that it defies the TFN's political agenda. The advancement of political agenda in schools is intolerable. It undermines the primary reason we educate people at all: to inform and equip individuals with the ability to make decisions based on information given to them.